Before I Wake

17

I WOKE UP in a cold sweat, with the sheets tangled around my legs, the pillow squeezed so tightly in my arms that feathers threatened to burst from the seam. But they weren’t my sheets. It wasn’t my pillow.

I rolled over to find Nash watching me from the armchair in the corner. The room was so small that his right knee touched the end of the mattress and his left was pressed against the TV cart. But this wasn’t Nash’s room, either. It was Tod’s. Tod had a room—really more of a big closet—and I was in his bed. Alone with his brother. Drowning in remorse and grief too thick to breathe through.

“You didn’t have to stay,” I said, sitting up to pull the pillow into my lap. My voice was hoarse from crying.

“Yeah, I did. There’s no door.”

“Oh, yeah.” I pushed damp, tangled hair back from my face. “Sorry. You want me to take you home?”

Nash shook his head slowly. “If you leave, you won’t be able to get back.” Because I had no idea where I was. “Are you okay?”

I stared at my hands in my lap, my legs crossed beneath me, bare beneath my short pj shorts. “Did Tod tell you what happened?”

“He said Alec died and you reclaimed his soul.”

I looked up in surprise, fighting flashbacks so vivid I could still feel Alec’s blood on my hands, warm, and sticky, and horrible. “Is that all he said?”

Nash’s eyes narrowed. “Is there more?”

“The dog. Falkor was dead, too. Butchered.” My eyes watered. Why hadn’t Tod told him what really happened?

“I’m so sorry, Kaylee.”

“Me, too.” But sorry didn’t cover it. Sorry didn’t even come close.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it was.” The blood. The knife. The look in Alec’s eyes. “It’s all my fault. All of it.”

Nash exhaled and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and when he looked at me, the unease and discomfort in his eyes echoed deep inside me, striking similar chords in my own heart. He didn’t know how to be there, in Tod’s room, with me, and I didn’t know how to be there, in the land of the living, with everyone else.

“Kaylee, I don’t know how to do this,” Nash said finally, and there was a fragile note in his voice. A delicate hesitance that made me want to apply a Band-Aid or spray on some disinfectant. But his wounds were too big for that.

So were mine.

“I don’t know how to talk to you anymore,” he continued. “I don’t know what you want to hear or what I’m allowed to say. But I do know you. You can sit there and tell me how much has changed, and how different you are now, but it’s not true. Death didn’t change you. It couldn’t. You’re still the girl I fell in love with the moment I first heard you laugh, and I still know exactly who you are.”

“Nash…”

“You would never hurt anyone,” he said, still watching me with that bruised look in his eyes.

“I hurt you.”

“Yeah. But not on purpose, and not as badly as I hurt you. That’s how I know that whatever happened, this isn’t your fault.”

“I killed him, Nash,” I said, and he blinked, then sat up slowly, staring at me in disbelief. “I stabbed him.” Then I burst into tears.

Nash circled the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress, then pulled me into a hug. “What happened?”

“I thought it was Avari.” More tears fell, and I half choked on them. “I thought he’d killed Alec and was wearing his soul. I thought I was freeing his soul, but… I killed him.” I could hardly form words around the sobs shaking my entire body, but Nash understood. His arms tightened around me, and I cried harder. I’d thought saying it out loud—admitting my guilt—would make me feel better. Like releasing the pressure behind a dam. But I felt worse for having said it out loud. Worse, knowing that Nash knew what I’d done.

I felt guiltier than ever for thinking I deserved relief from that guilt in the first place.

“What happened?” Tod asked, and I looked up to find him standing in the middle of the little available floor space. Nash stood and shoved his hands in his pockets, and I threw my arms around Tod. He squeezed me and I laid my head on his shoulder.

“Nothing,” Nash said, and my guilt thickened when I saw him watching me over his brother’s shoulder. “I was trying to convince her that this isn’t her fault. Avari tricked her.”

Tod pulled away so he could look at me. “You told him? Kaylee, you weren’t supposed to tell him. I spent the past two hours cleaning everything up so no one would know.”

“Cleaning it up?” A sick feeling bubbled deep in my stomach. “What did you do?”

“I did what had to be done to keep you out of this.” His gaze held mine. He was unashamed of whatever he’d done. “But that won’t work if you’re not on board.”

“Then maybe you should have told me what you were doing.”

“I didn’t think you’d let me.” He sank onto the bed and pulled me down to sit next to him. “Besides, I kind of felt like ‘don’t confess to murder’ goes without saying.”

“It’s not murder. It was an accident,” Nash said, and he looked even more out of place, since he was the only one standing.

“We know that, but what are the police going to think? How likely are they to believe that she accidentally stabbed a good friend in the stomach, a month after she killed her math teacher the same way?”

“But that was self-defense.” Shock echoed inside me, ricocheting from one terrifying thought to the next. “Beck stabbed me first.”

Tod took my hand, and his fingers wrapped around mine. “And right now they believe that. But since we can’t tell the police you’re doing battle with a demon who can possess your friends and wear the souls of the dead, we have to start thinking about what conclusions they’re going to draw if they find out you were in that apartment. Two stabbing deaths in a month aren’t going to be labeled ‘coincidence.’”

He was right. I didn’t want him to be right, but what I wanted had never mattered less. “So what did you do?”

“I buried the dog and got rid of any evidence that he ever existed.”

“Why?”

“Because Alec’s apartment is now the scene of an open homicide investigation, and they’re going to test every blood sample they find. But Falkor’s DNA isn’t anything their lab geeks will recognize. I also busted in the front door and took his TV and stereo, so it’d look more like a robbery.”

“Did you report it?” I asked, blinking more tears from my eyes at the thought of Alec lying all alone in a pool of his own blood.

Tod shook his head. “An anonymous call would look suspicious, but I left the door open. One of his neighbors will find him and report it.”

I shook my head slowly. “It doesn’t feel right. He deserves better than to be found by a stranger.”

Tod tucked one arm around me, his fingers curling over my hip. “Kaylee, there’s nothing more we can do for Alec, so I did what needed to be done for you. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

“Thank you.” I wrapped my arms around him again and he held me so tight breathing wasn’t an option. “But maybe you could not alter any more crime scenes on my behalf? At least, not until I’ve had a fair chance to talk you out of it? The whole ‘ask for forgiveness rather than permission’ approach to our relationship doesn’t really work for me.”

“So, what? I’m just supposed to let you get arrested, which would force you into hiding, which means you wouldn’t see your friends and family, and the two of us would be all alone together…?” Tod faked a frown. “Hmm… Maybe I should have thought that one through a little more.”

“That’s not the conclusion I was headed toward, but if it works…” I kissed him, desperately trying to see through the dark to the light at the end of the tunnel.

“Okay, seriously, it was bad enough the first time. I don’t need the instant replay,” Nash said, and I pulled away from Tod reluctantly.

“Sorry.”

“Someone take me back. Now.”

Tod stood. “I’ll take you both. Kaylee’s dad’s going to call in the cavalry if she’s not back in half an hour, and since I can only assume that when he says ‘the cavalry,’ he means Levi and Madeline… We should probably all go.”

“I don’t want to go yet.” I still hadn’t figured out how to tell my dad what had happened—I didn’t want him to look at me and see a murderer. “I’ll call him and tell him I’m staying here. Unless you want me to go…?”

“I want you to stay forever. But if you want to stay here tonight, you need to tell him that in person. If he doesn’t see you in the flesh very soon, he’s going to lose it. He’s worried, Kaylee.”

I nodded reluctantly, and Tod turned to Nash. “You can’t tell anyone what she told you,” he said, and Nash bristled under the command.

“I’m not going to tell anyone because it wasn’t her fault and I don’t want to ruin her life. Not because of anything you say. But I can’t promise Sabine won’t find out.” Because her fear-reading ability was often eerily like mind reading.

“Then make sure she won’t say anything,” Tod said.

“Wait, I’m not going to lie to everyone, guys. Not to my friends and family. They deserve to know how Alec really died. He deserves that.”

“No,” Tod said, and behind him, Nash was shaking his head.

“Now how is that fair? The only thing you both agree on is disagreeing with me.”

“We agree about protecting you,” Nash clarified.

“Well, that’s not your call to make, and I don’t need to be protected.”

“Yes, you do.” Tod crossed his arms over his chest. “And don’t try to turn this around and call us sexist. This isn’t a damsel-in-distress moment. We all need to protect one another, and you’ve done your fair share of that.”

“Yeah. We protect one another from Avari and Thane, and anything else that goes bump in the Netherworld. Not from our own friends and family.”

“He’s not worried about Em and your dad,” Nash said. “He’s worried about Levi and Madeline.”

“There are rules in the afterlife, Kaylee.” Tod looked scared. “And killing innocent people is against most of them.”

“You were there. You know it was an accident!”

He took both of my hands and looked right into my eyes. “And I will die shouting it from the rooftops, if I have to. But at the end of the day, the bottom line is that you couldn’t tell the difference between a hellion wearing a human soul and a hellion wearing a human body, and it’s your job to know the difference. And if you’re not competent in your job, they have no reason to keep you…alive.”

“You think I’m incompetent?” My chest felt sore. Bruised. I knew Alec’s death was my fault, but it hurt to think that he agreed with me.

“No. I think Madeline would have done the same thing you did. The same thing I would have done in your position. But if you tell them what really happened, there will be incident reports, and inquisitions, and eventually a hearing. Madeline can’t afford to lose you right now, but once all this is over and they’ve recovered from a massive personnel shortage, someone will have to be held accountable for a mistake that cost the life of an innocent man. And when Madeline comes to take you, we’ll have to run, and we’ll be on the run for the rest of forever with only each other, and nothing to do but explore the youthful perfection eternity has blessed us with, and…” Tod frowned. “Okay, that makes it sound better than it will actually be.”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit overblown?” I asked.

“Well, I guess we could skip straight to the young lovers on the run part, but do you really want to leave all your friends and family behind?”

He was joking—hopefully—but his point was as serious as the fear in his eyes. Fear for me.

“I’m not going to lose you, Kaylee. No matter what I have to do, or whom I have to fight. Even if that means quashing your vexing tendencies toward self-sacrifice.”

“Did you just say ‘vexing’?” Nash asked.

Tod scowled. “Nothing else seemed to fit. I stand by my word choice.”

“Are you going to be like this for eternity?” I demanded, trying to resist when he pulled me close again.

“If you mean protective, and devoted, and perfectly preserved, then, yes. That is the burden I bear.”

“I mean stubborn. I mean unrelentingly, infuriatingly stubborn.”

“That, too. But have you looked in the mirror lately, because we happen to share that particular personality flaw.”

“I’m not going to lie to my dad, Tod. Not again. Not about this. He won’t tell anyone.”

The reaper exhaled slowly. “I guess I can’t argue with that.”

Nash huffed. “Never thought I’d hear those words come out of your mouth… .”

“Wanna hear some really colorful ones?” Tod started to turn to Nash, but I swiveled his face back in my direction with one hand on his cheek.

“Play nice or go home.”

Tod lifted one brow and glanced pointedly around the room. His room.

“Oh. Well, then, take me home.”